Hello Summer!

Well I am proud and excited to say I wrapped up my first year of graduate school just a couple short weeks ago! It was a crazy ride, but my end of year review went really well and I'm extremely excited to keep moving forward with what I've learned and the new directions I continue to be moving toward. I'm most excited to dive into animation next year. I think that is going to be a really wonderful experience as I've always had such a strong interest in the field. Actually, that was my original major at SCAD before I ran off to be friends with Peter Pan at Disney World. When I came back, I had a difficult time readjusting to reality and switched my major to help me cope haha. I wouldn't change that for the world though. I love the world of illustration and I'm glad to be a part of it. Plus, there's no rule against doing both, and that's really what the MFA in Illustration Practice program is about: breaking boundaries between illustration and other fields.

Anyway, I have a busy couple of weeks ahead filled with drawing and a lot of planning for the next year. The second year program is a self guided thesis and I plan to focus on visual development for animation as well as children's product markets. I'll be pushing both my Wish Academy and Magical Girl Battle Royale projects to completed states and working on my publishing portfolio simultaneously. I'm looking forward to sharing all of this with you guys, and of course, I would love any feedback along the way! In the mean time though, have some doodles and I'll be posting more soon!

Until next time, best wishes!

~Josh

Magical Girl Battle Royale!

For my independent project this semester, I began the early stages of concepting for a game: Magical Girl Battle Royale! I was so excited to combine two of my favorite things: magical heroines and ultimate fights to the death! While I might leave the "to the death" part out of the actual production, I'm really excited to continue moving forward with this and plan to have a complete board/card game hybrid by the end of this year! There is still a lot of opportunity for growth and change, but for now, I present you with the first girls of Magical Girl Battle Royale!

With only one week left before my year end review, things are pretty hectic here, but I still have a few more projects to share before my first year in grad school is all said and done. So until then, best wishes!

~Josh

Birds and Fancy Things!

So I am way late on this blog post, as these patterns have been floating around the internet elsewhere for nearly two months haha. I had jumped right from these into several other projects, so they kind of fell to the back of my mind. Better late than never I suppose! The theme I ran with for these was "Birds and Fancy Things", so please enjoy the silliness. =)

My first year at grad school is now coming to a close and my end of year review is coming up in just two short weeks! It's been an amazing experience thus far and I'll be sure to do an extensive post on the year once my review is over and I can breathe again haha. Until next time, best wishes!

~Joshua

Unicorn lions and feather girls

Not too much to report at the moment, just plugging along with my consistant workload. Despite my constant pursuit of the holy grail that is a good nights sleep, I'm really loving this just non stop work mode I'm in. I'm really enthused about all of my projects, and my views on illustration and design are rapidly evolving. 

I believe I previously mentioned that we recently had a patterning workshop with the amazing Julia Rothman here in the MICA ILP MFA program. I have an entire collection in the works, but I really enjoyed my sketch from the workshop so I decided to bring that to final. 

Additionally, I have an upcoming assignment that requires depicting an obscure fictional land. While it is not the one that I have chosen, I was fascinated by the concept of feather island. The inhabitants are all women who instead of hair have feathers and are birthed from exotic bird eggs. Their queen is born from the phoenix egg and therefore is ever reborn. The lowly citizen come from furry caterpillar eggs and therefore have wiry hair instead of feathers. This is definitely a world I plan to explore more in my spare time, but I took some time to doodle these lovely ladies in the meant time. 

That's about it for now, so until next time, best wishes!

~Josh

We're not in Kansas anymore!

The Wizard of Oz (along with most fairy tales and stories from my childhood) holds a very dear place in my heart. Most importantly, I associate the story with my late grandmother who played a large role in my life and really helped to pave the yellow brick road to my artistic career. That being said, it's been something I have been wanting to address for a while, and I was really excited when I finally got the opportunity to do so.

I really find myself enjoying working digitally these days. I have several other pieces on the horizon, a few of which are traditional, so I am excited to see how my recent work in this format will speak to my hand with traditional media. I look forward to sharing this with you all, and until next time, Best Wishes!

~Josh

Tarot cards again

The Queen of Wands

Judgement

So for my latest assignment in digital, we were randomly given two tarot cards and had to choose one to illustrate. Being a grad student, I decided it would behoove me to go ahead and do both. I definitely had a lot of fun with both of these, and I'm excited to continue to explore more digital work. For those of you unfamiliar with the meanings of these cards, you should check out Biddy Tarot, it's a great site that has a pretty detailed account of each card. 

Interestingly, I've done a tarot assignment before. It was in my digital illustration course during the first quarter of my junior year at SCAD. I actually think one of which was the Queen of Wands. Unfortunately, I think I lost the files on my old laptop, but I would love to show you all a comparison. From what I recall, these would be a major improvement haha. 

Coming next, I'll have my reinterpretation of The Wizard of Oz with some sample publishing work. I'm really excited to plow through that work this weekend. Until then, best wishes!

~Josh 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's a quick little doodle I did for my good childhood friend for Valentine's day. We've been "married" status on facebook for the past four years to save each other from those awkward facebook relationship status moments haha, and we usually celebrate valentine's day and our "anniversary" as well for fun. Since we've been friends since we were four, she's also probably my longest running Valentine =).

Anyway, I have a lot of other projects coming up on my front including: Space Oz, a couple tarot designs and some patterning stuff which I'm pretty excited about. I look forward to sharing all of this with you guys in the coming weeks! Until then, best wishes!

~Josh